We saw a bear a few hours ago, in the wild as they say; a Black Bear cub. We were on our way back from a hike to the base of Mount Procter, wending our way along a rough path through thick alpine forest, the town a good five or six kilometres away, when we heard a scuffling in the brush. We looked about 5 or 6 metres to our right and saw the bear, about the size of big kid’s toy whizzing, squirrel style and surprisingly quickly, up the side of a birch tree.
In some ways bears are like the ultimate superheroes; they can outrun you, outclimb you, outswim you and they’re strong enough to rip your head off if they fancy ripping your head off. Or they might just disembowel you. As far as I know they can’t outjump humans but since my longest ever long jump is about 5 feet it’s not really an issue. While this bear looked just as cute as bears can, the thought struck us that Momma or Poppa bear might not be far off and, while not as juggernauty as Grizzlies they can get up to 300+ pounds and when the kids are concerned are prone to getting a touch irate. We left.
You don’t get bears in central Vancouver. The reason we saw this one is because last Monday we took an 18hour Greyhound bus ride directly east out of the City and up into the Southern tip of the Canadian Rockies. After passing through, and stopping in, every small town on the way – Chilliwack, Hope, Vernon, Nelson, Creston, Cranbrook and about a million others – we decanted in the very cool and elegantly bijou-esque ‘city’ of Fernie. It’s an old mining town, down in the valley below the Lizard Range, on the banks of the Elk River, and surrounded on all sides by bloody great mountains. We’re 1000m above Vancouver, which is at sea level, and the largest of the mountains around us is 1700m above us. As I said, big buggers.
We’re working at the Raging Elk hostel for accommodation, having decided we wanted to get out of the City for the Summer. Fernie is a serious skiing destination and, conversely, is pretty quiet during the Summer, despite also being a world class mountain biking town. I’m typing this on a warm evening on the balcony of the almost empty hostel, facing West in the direction of Polar Peak. On Friday night it was from this direction that we were hit by the edge of a tornado. It had been a stifling hot day and we’d burnt ourselves out by accidentally going on a 25k bike jaunt (we’ve imported Dirk & Dotty, our bikes, out here with us) mostly uphill to the Island Park Lodge. There had just been a cloudburst which cooled the air down nicely and I was busy telling the Canadians that we’d seen all the storm we were going to see that evening when the temperature sank and everything above the mountain range turned black and the sky seemed to start flying toward us. The wind suddenly hit us incredibly hard, rain smashed down and the air was full of lightning. A large trampoline in the garden was pushed 15 feet along the garden, thunder ripped out and the lights all across town went out as something, somewhere must have been struck or ripped out of the ground. For half an hour or so we watched from the windows of the darkened hostel then it just died away. An hour later the sky was clear again and we felt safe enough to go on a pub crawl around Fernie’s four pubs. That was good too.
The tornado didn’t manage to put a stop to the Town’s first ever Fernie Fest though. These Canadians are a never-say-die, can-do bunch. We’d e-mailed around Fernie seeing if we could pick up a bit of work before we arrived and someone had suggested volunteering at the local Festival. It sounded fun so we signed up. On the Friday afternoon (just after our 15000km bike bender) we popped down to the site to see if they needed any help just setting up.
They didn’t, having pretty much just put the finishing touches to the main stage and all the parameters. Three hours later almost every single construction had been ripped out like rotten teeth and bent out of all shape. They started a little late on the Saturday but virtually carried on as planned. A seriously good effort.
Fernie Fest was great fun, similar in spirit to the Shambala festival we’ve been going to in the UK for about the last five years or so but the setting was just incredible. Em was the popcorn lady on Saturday night and I didn’t get down there, with a satchel full of booze, ‘til after 11pm. The last live band were still going at 2am and we didn’t leave ‘til after 4. The woods were lit by lanterns and led into the dance area; we sat by the river as it sloshed past and met some great people, what a fantastic atmosphere.
Sunday we ran the main gate and enjoyed the general level of goodwill before heading back into town to watch the Canada Day fireworks against the monolithic blackness of Mount Fernie from the roof of the hostel.
The last few of weeks in Vancouver were a mix of fun and stress. My construction job in Bowen came to an abrupt halt as we gradually realised our boss had several bad habits, one of which involved our wages going straight up his nose. Luckily I only ended up $200 down while our mates were owed full week’s wages. It’s ongoing and we may or may not have heard the end of it. Other things: I finally got to go to a baseball match. While it’s clearly not as good a game as cricket it has plenty to recommend it. Not least the beer and the foot long hotdogs. A few weeks previously we spent a weekend at a hostel in the town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island checking out a possible job – it didn’t materialise but it was fun cycling around on Cruiser bikes, watching Em realise that the water in glacial lakes just keeps getting colder and colder, and seeing all the street names correspond to the Lake District where the in-laws live. We had a good time in Vancouver and met some great people but time and opportunity just roll on.
Update: Em’s just dragged me up another mountain and is now collapsed in a hammock in the back garden. Despite my chronic fear of heights Em somehow keeps managing to continually drag me up things. We took a 2.6km wobbly ski lift up into the local ski hills and then hiked up to the nearest summit which is over 2000 metres above sea level; naturally the views are incredible, mountains as far as the eye can see and the eye can see a pretty long way. I walked down, watching out for bears, while Em went into rhapsodies over how ‘floaty’ the return trip, on a flimsy bit of cable, was.
Next weekend we move on to the Caravan Farm Theatre near Armstrong where we’ll be running their Front of House and Box Office for the next five or six weeks. It’s all under canvas and average summertime temps are in the mid 30s. Hmmm.
